Why I Read
There’s a scene in the movie Eat Pray Love where Julia Roberts’ character teaches her Italian tutor an English word. She points to her glass of wine and says, “therapist” with a cheeky smile on her face — to me, that’s what reading is. (But don’t get me wrong, I also love wine.)
My love of reading began at a young age, visiting the library with my dad on weekends, checking out the maximum number of items allowed on our library cards — for the record, at the Toronto library, it’s 50 items.
When it came time to decide on a major in university, I shied away from choosing to study English, for fear of taking the joy out of the thing I love to do. Instead, I chose to pursue a degree in linguistics, having always been fascinated by words and language.
The year after I graduated, I set a goal of reading 100 books a year. As much as I had always loved to read, I realized I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted to be and decided I wanted to change that. I had just finished university, so gone were the days of having mandatory academic readings — I now had the luxury to read for pleasure, whenever I wanted to. I was determined to do this for myself and now am at a point where I’ve successfully met (or surpassed) this goal the past five years.
You might wonder how I came to achieve this — how I went from reading maybe 20 books a year to 100 books a year. I had the motivation and the want to do it, but like with anything new, I needed to build the habit for it. Fresh out of school and living at home again, I spent my mornings commuting from the suburbs to my day-job downtown, and then back again in the evenings. This gave me the time and the space to develop my reading habit. I saw three options in front of me for how I could spend my subway rides — I could just sit, I could listen to music, or I could read. So, I chose the latter.
Not that we’re really going many places these days… but pre-pandemic, it would be shocking to encounter me without a book in my purse. By always having a book on-hand, I knew that no matter where I was, I could dedicate some time to reading if I wanted — in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, waiting for a friend, at the bank.
We have to make a habit easy in order for us to accomplish it, or at least make it easy to initially build the habit for accomplishing it.
At the start of 2020, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear for the first time, which put into words the technique for what I had been doing — habit stacking.
Essentially, habit stacking is when you pair a new habit along with an existing one — there are so many actions in our day-to-day lives that we don’t even see as “habits” anymore because they feel so commonplace. You don’t want to have to work hard for your habits; you want your habits to work hard for you.
His structure for habit stacking is this: “After/Before [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”.
For me, that looked like, “after I grab my purse to leave for work, I will also grab my book” — you build the new habit into your existing routine. Because you’re adding to an existing habit vs. trying to instate an entirely brand new thing, there’s a better chance of you sticking to it. Another way I made this easy for myself was by leaving my book du jour on my pillow — this gave me a simple visual reminder that said, “before I go to bed, I will read for 15 minutes”.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to hear that I’ve been craving escape this past year. I think so many of us have. To me, reading is an escape — not of the sipping-a-piña-colada-on-the-beach variety, but it’s a mental escape. It’s an escape from technology, from the outside world, from everything going on and everything I cannot change or control. It is therapeutic and allows us the opportunity to be transported to another place or time.
Prioritizing yourself and your interests — whatever they may be — is not a waste of time. To me, making time for what I enjoy matters a great deal, and reading is often one of my top priorities. Aside from the recreational aspect, reading welcomes learning and growth, and has taught me how to better manage my time and achieve lofty goals I set for myself. And these days, picking up an actual book and having a break from all the screen-time can feel so luxurious.
Some might say that with reading so quickly I’m not really enjoying each book, but I am — this is what brings me joy. Reading as many stories as I can, learning as much as I possibly can. There are certainly books I try to read slower than normal and I do so with so much affection, truly appreciating each word.
However, I’ll also be the first to call myself out on the fact that up until recently, I was focusing almost entirely on input and not output. I was reading lots — an impressive amount — but not writing lots. I can see that I’ve used my love of reading and the volume I read as an excuse. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword though, as I also read to become a better writer.
For a long while, my reading process consisted of read-reflect, read-reflect, read-reflect, over and over and over. As a writer, reading is an evaluative process of figuring out what I like and don’t, and ultimately what I’d like to emulate and avoid in my own writing.
While reading a book, I flag or highlight sections I’d like to go back to at the end — sometimes it’s a phrase, a fact, a beautiful string of words. I almost enjoy this part more than reading itself… For me, reading is not a passive thing. Going through these quotes at the end, I give myself the opportunity to pause and think, reflecting on what I read and what I learned.
These days, however, my process has shifted to read-reflect-create and this makes me so happy. I have now built a habit for writing, having habit-stacked it with reading. For so long, I resisted creating — I was more focused on input (reading) than output (writing). I truly do read to become a better writer, but there comes a point when that isn’t enough.
How can I think I will become a better writer if I’m not writing? To put it into other words, I picture a runner — they can think about running all they want and strategize how best to improve and succeed, but if they never put that into action, how can they possibly become a better runner?